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LAUREATE 
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The  Little  Bookfellow  Series 


Laureate  Address 


Other  titles  in  this  series  are : 

ESTRAYS,    by    Thomas    Kennedy,    George    Seymour, 
Vincent  Starrett  and  Basil  Thompson. 

WILLIAM  DE  MORGAN,  a  Post-Victorian  Eealist,  by 
Flora  Warren  Seymour. 

LYRICS,  by  Laura  Blackburn. 

STEVENSON  AT  MANASQUAN,  by  Charlotte  Eaton. 

CANDLES  IN  THE  SUN,  by  William  Griffith. 


Laureate   Address 

of  John  G.  Neihardt 

Upon    Official   Notification   of   His 
Choice  as  Poet  Laureate  of  Nebraska 


CHICAGO 
THE  BOOKFELLOWS 

1921 


Of  this  first  edition,  five  hundred  copies  have  been 
printed  in  the  month  of  November,  1921. 


Copyright  1921 
by  Flora  Warren  Seymour 


THE  TORCH    PRESS 

CEDAR   RAPIDS 

IOWA 


CONTENTS 

THE   OCCASION 9 

THE  ADDRESS 15 

BIBLIOGRAPHY  —  WORKS  OF  JOHN  G.  NEIHARDT  47 


The  Occasion 


On  April  18th,  1921,  the  Senate  and  House  of 
Representatives  of  the  Nebraska  legislature  passed  a 
joint  and  concurrent  resolution  naming  John  G.  Nei- 
hardt  Poet  Laureate  of  Nebraska,  in  recognition  of 
the  American  Epic  Cycle  upon  which  he  has  been 
engaged  for  eight  years. 

On  June  18th,  1921,  the  official  notification  cere- 
mony, conducted  by  representatives  of  the  state  gov- 
ernment and  the  State  University,  was  held  in  the 
Temple  Theatre  at  Lincoln,  Prof.  A.  A.  Reed  presid- 
ing. Professor  Reed,  after  stating  the  purpose  of 
the  meeting,  introduced  Dean  L.  A.  Sherman,  who 
represented  the  University  as  Acting  Chancellor. 
Dean  Sherman  said: 


We  have  unique  grounds  for  congratulat- 
ing ourselves  upon  the  occasion  which  calls 
us  together  on  this  eighteenth  of  June,  1921. 
It  is  an  auspicious  date  and  day  for  the 
Commonwealth  of  Nebraska,  No  other  state, 
it  appears,  has,  by  legislative  recognition, 
a  poet  laureate.  No  other  state,  we  may 
fairly  say,  has  such  a  reason.  Nature  has 
not  shaped  for  us,  in  this  paradise  of  prairie 
country,  mountains  that  might  become  by 
myth  or  fancy,  the  home  of  gods  or  muses. 
There  is,  there  can  be,  no  Olympus,  no  Par- 
nassus here.  But  we  have  that  which  has 
given  fame  to  all  the  sacred  groves  and  moun- 
tains and  fountains  of  spiritual  history.  We 
have  the  poet  himself  in  presence  with  us 
now. 

The  ceremonial  that  we  are  assembled  to 
witness  is  by  no  means  a  novel  one.  In  the 
days  when  Parnassus  was,  in  the  youth  time 
of  the  arts,  sons  of  Apollo  were  crowned  pub- 
licly with  his  laurel.  And  so  at  the  end  of 
the  middle  age  was  Petrarch  crowned  at  the 
Capitol  in  Rome.  Were  our  own  great  new 
Capitol  finished,  it  would  have  been  fitting 
that  the  first  Poet  Laureate  of  Nebraska 
should  have  been  honored  at  or  within  its 
portals.  We  of  the  University  think  our- 
selves fortunate  to  offer  as  its  substitute  this 
meeting  place.  I  have  pleasure  of  presenting 
here  the  Honorable  E.  P.  Brown,  who  as  the 
representative  of  his  Excellency,  Governor 
McKelvie,  will  deliver  the  address  of  noti- 
fication. 


Mr.  Brown  then  read  from  an  engrossed  copy  the 
resolution  of  the  Legislature: 

HOUSE  BOLL  NO.  467 

Introduced  by  George  C.  Snow  of  Dawes  County. 
TITLE  :  A  Bill  for  a  Joint  and  Concurrent  Resolution 
declaring  John  G.  Neihardt  the  poet  laureate  of 
Nebraska. 

WHEREAS,  there  is  the  closest  connection  between 
the  growth  of  civilization  and  the  development  of 
literature ;  and 

WHEREAS,  wise  commonwealths,  in  all  ages,  have 
recognized  this  relation  by  lifting  the  poet  to  the 
same  plane  as  the  statesman  and  military  chieftain; 
and 

WHEREAS,  John  G.  Neihardt,  a  citizen  of  Ne- 
braska, has  written  a  national  epic  wherein  he  has 
developed  the  mood  of  courage  with  which  our  pio- 
neers explored  and  subdued  our  plains,  and  thus  has 
inspired  in  Americans  that  love  of  the  land  and  its 
heroes  whereby  great  national  traditions  are  built 
and  perpetuated;  and 

WHEREAS,  our  people  wish  to  exalt  such  gifts  of 
the  human  spirit;  therefore  be  it 

RESOLVED  AND  ENACTED,  by  the  House  of  Repre- 
sentatives, the  Senate  concurring,  that  John  G. 
Neihardt  be,  and  hereby  is,  declared  poet  laureate 
of  Nebraska. 

WALTER  L.  ANDERSON, 

Speaker  of  the  House. 
F.  P.  CORRICK, 

Chief  Clerk  of  the  House. 
PELHAM  A.  BARROWS, 

President  of  the  Senate. 
CLYDE  H.  BARNARD, 

Secretary  of  the  Senate. 
Approved  April  21,  1921,  12:30  o'clock  P.M. 

SAMUEL  R.  MCKELVIE, 

Governor. 


Mr.  Reed9  then  addressing  Mr.  Neihardt,  spoke  as 
follows: 

We  are  met  formally  to  complete  the  action 
of  the  representatives  of  the  people  of  the 
State  in  designating  you  Poet  Laureate  of 
Nebraska,  an  action  based  upon  their  rec- 
ognition of  the  eminence  you  have  obtained 
in  your  art.  To  this  end  I  am  clothed  with 
the  full  authority  of  the  Governor  and  bear 
his  commands  to  tender  you,  as  I  now  do, 
formal  and  official  notice  of  your  appoint- 
ment, and  also  to  offer  you  assurance  that 
the  action  carries  with  it  from  the  people  of 
your  State  their  respect,  their  admiration 
and  their  love. 

Thereupon  Mr.  Neihardt,  after  expressing  appreci- 
ation of  the  honor,  delivered  the  following  address: 


The  Address 


LAUREATE  ADDRESS 

I  want  to  talk  to  you  about  the  technique  of  Poetry 
and  the  relation  of  that  art  to  education  and  the 
social  process  in  general.  In  order  that  you  may  be 
able  to  judge  as  to  the  relevance  of  my  remarks,  1 
must  first  tell  you  what  I  understand  by  the  word 
"education." 

Were  the  definition,  that  I  hold,  my  own,  I  would 
not  presume  to  offer  it  here ;  but  I  need  only  find  the 
proper  words  with  which  to  express  the  common 
opinion  of  many  seers  in  many  times  and  countries; 
and  this,  unfortunately,  seems  now  to  be  necessary, 
for  we  have  been  living  in  one  of  the  most  materialistic 
ages  that  have  ever  been  known,  and  of  the  many 
ideals  that  have  suffered,  that  of  education  has  not 
suffered  least. 

I  would  say  that  education  is  fundamentally  a 
spiritual  process.  In  its  proper  function  it  is  con- 
cerned less  with  the  problem  of  acquiring  the  means 
of  life  than  with  the  far  more  difficult  one  of  knowing 
what  to  do  with  life  after  one  is  in  possession  o£  the 
means  to  live.  We  have  heard  much  of  practical  edu- 
cation ;  and  there  is  no  fault  to  find  with  the  expres- 
sion ;  for  ' i  practical ' '  means  that  which  will  work, 
and  surely  only  that  which  will  work  may  be  regard- 

15 


ed  as  good.  But  there  Las  been  something  radically 
wrong  with  our  understanding  of  the  word  "practi- 
cal." Owing  to  the  tremendous  economic  pressure  of 
our  individualistic  social  system,  we  have  been  forced 
to  interpret  the  word  as  meaning  that  which  con- 
tributes directly  to  material  success;  and  for  a  great 
many  people  practical  education  has  come  to  signify 
that  mental  training  which  is  calculated  to  give  the 
maximum  of  income  in  the  minimum  of  time. 

Obviously,  if  that  conception  be  a  true  one,  a 
human  being  is  little  more  than  a  machine  designed 
for  the  purpose  of  diverting  to  his  own  uses  as  great 
a  portion  of  the  world's  stream  of  wealth  as  may 
be  possible  under  the  circumstances.  Thus,  the  em- 
phasis of  life  is  placed  upon  a  purely  material  scale 
of  values  —  which  is  the  scale  of  the  brute.  That 
conception  of  education  results  in  the  classification 
of  men  and  women  by  what  they  possess  rather  than 
by  what  they  are;  and  it  is  a  matter  of  common  know- 
ledge that,  in  the  anarchic  scramble  for  possession  of 
material  things,  it  is  not  infrequently  the  admittedly 
lower  type  of  man  that  arouses  the  envy  of  the 
neighborhood.  In  that  scramble  of  the  acquisitive 
instincts,  to  cherish  the  higher  values  as  evolved 
through  ages  of  race  experience,  is  to  insure  defeat. 
In  that  scramble,  conscience  and  human  sympathy 
and  all  the  priceless  imponderabilia  of  the  soul  be- 
come as  a  mill-stone  hung  about  the  neck  of  him  who 
holds  them  dear.  Furthermore,  however  much  a 
man,  as  viewed  by  the  envious  eyes  of  his  neighbors, 
may  gain  in  apparent  worth  by  the  possession  of 

16 


material  things,  it  remains  true  that  not  one  jot  is 
added  to  the  real  stature  of  the  man  by  virtue  of 
that  possession ;  for  a  man  can  be  no  other  than  that 
which  he  truly  is,  as  distinguished  from  what  he  has. 
And  it  is  with  what  a  man  is  —  that  is  to  say,  with 
personality  —  that  education  must  be  chiefly  con- 
cerned. It  is  the  process  of  making  a  man  rich  in 
the  only  values  that  can  not  be  acquired  by  accident, 
or  theft  in  any  of  its  many  disguises,  and  that  can  not 
be  lost  by  such  means.  And  in  what  do  these  values 
consist?  In  that  complex  of  spiritual  and  mental 
attitudes  that  have  resulted  from  man's  age-long 
struggle.  And  in  this  sense,  it  is  the  prime  function 
of  education  to  make  men  social  beings ;  to  make  them, 
insofar  as  may  be  possible,  citizens  of  all  time  and  of 
all  countries;  to  give  them  the  widest  possible  com- 
prehension of  a  man's  relation  to  other  men  and  to 
his  physical  environment;  to  substitute  sympathy  for 
prejudice  in  the  list  of  human  motives.  In  other 
words,  the  consciousness  of  the  individual  must  be  ex- 
tended to  include  the  race  consciousness.  It1  must  be 
made  possible  for  the  one  to  live  vicariously  the  life 
of  the  many  from  the  beginning. 

It  will  be  said  by  some  that  this  is  a  large  order, 
indeed;  but  it  must  be  remembered  that  education  is 
not  an  end,  but  rather  an  endless  process,  a  manner  of 
becoming,  a  spiritual  direction.  The  fundamental 
importance  of  World  Literature  in  this  connection 
ought  to  be  obvious.  Institutions  of  learning  are  de- 
vices for  facilitating  the  educational  process ;  but  in- 
sofar as  they  neglect  World  Literature,  they  fall  short 

17 


of  their  purpose ;  for  what  is  World  Literature  but  a 
record  of  the  continuous  consciousness  of  the  race? 
And  what  is  Science  but  a  running  commentary  on 
that  tremendous  text? 

It  may  be  remarked  by  some  that  this  is  old  fash- 
ioned Humanism,  impractical  in  the  modern  world. 
It  is  not  Humanism  that  is  impractical,  but  rather  the 
debased  ideals  of  our  materialistic  society ;  for  what  is 
it  that  all  men  seek  if  it  be  not  happiness  ?  And  what 
is  happiness  but  the  spiritual  result  of  harmonious 
adjustment  to  the  world  of  men  and  things?  And 
can  one  logically  hope  to  achieve  that  state  through  a 
material  process  ?  A  thousand  seers  have  agreed  that 
happiness  does  not  come  from  without;  that  it  is  not 
something  to  be  pursued  and  captured;  that  posses- 
sion of  things  can  not  produce  it;  that  the  desire  to 
possess  is  like  a  flame  growing  upon  the  fuel  that 
feeds  it,  or  like  one's  own  shadow  that  one  pursues  in 
vain.  A  certain  amount  of  material  goods  is  neces- 
sary to  existence ;  but  the  needed  amount  is  not  great, 
and  what  could  be  less  wise  than  to  spend  one 's  life  in 
acquiring  the  means  of  life,  and  neglecting  to  live  ? 

It  is  especially  fitting  that  this  view  of  Education 
should  be  emphasized  at  this  time  when  the  word 
"Democracy"  is  in  every  mouth.  Though  Democ- 
racy is  fundamentally  an  economic  concept,  concerned 
with  the  nice  adjustment  of  individual  rights  and 
duties  that  all  may  contribute  to,  and  justly  share, 
the  means  of  life ;  yet  its  ultimate  purpose  transcends 
the  grosser  world  and  emphasizes;  the  equality  of  op- 
portunity in  the  spiritual  realm  as  well.  The  so- 

18 


called  "practical"  education  is  too  much  concerned 
with  the  economic  world,  too  little  with  the  more  im- 
portant business  of  the  soul.  As  it  is  generally  un- 
derstood today,  practical  education  is  essentially  a 
process  calculated  to  make  efficient  serfs  for  a  Bour- 
geois social  system  that  now  seems  doomed  to  pass 
away,  as  the  result  of  its  culminating  catastrophe  in 
August,  1914.  The  education  of  the  future  should 
not  make  us  less  efficient  in  the  economic  realm;  but 
it  should  certainly  make  it  possible  for  all  to  share 
that  priceless  racial  inheritance,  which,  as  I  have  been 
saying,  is  the  very  essence  of  genuine  education. 

Now  let  us  proceed  to  the  discussion  of  Poetry. 

In  this  scientific  age  men  justly  demand  that  noth- 
ing shall  survive  without  some  utilitarian  justification. 
If  it  could  be  shown  that  poetry  performs  no  import- 
ant function  in  the  social  process,  I  should  be  among 
the  first  to  insist  that  the  writing  of  it  be  interdicted 
and  that  poets  be  set  to  useful  tasks.  Happily,  how- 
ever, poetry  does  not  suffer  under  the  pragmatic  test, 
as  I  hope  to  show. 

You  will  agree  with  me  in  defining  Language  as  a 
means  for  communicating  states  of  consciousness. 
Now  if  all  states  of  consciousness  were  capable  of 
communication  by  direct  factual  statement,  then  the 
study  of  Language  would  indeed  be  no  more  than  the 
study  of  words  arranged  according  to  the  rules  of 
Grammar  and  Syntax.  But  you  have  all  noted  that 
in  the  higher  realms  of  human  utterance,  certain 
effects  are  obtained  that  can  not  be  explained  satis- 
factorily by  the  most  industrious  parsing  and  analysis. 

19 


Something  subtle  and  powerful  somehow  escapes  be- 
tween your  nouns,  pronouns,  adjectives,  verbs,  ad- 
verbs, prepositions  and  conjunctions.  Something  is 
present  in  the  greater  moments  of  human  utterance 
that  quite  eludes  your  finest  mesh  of  case,  number, 
tense,  mode.  At  such  moments,  you  become  aware 
that  it  is  a  mere  skeleton  you  have  been  analyzing, 
and  that  some  mysterious  spirit  lives  among  those  dry 
bones.  At  such  moments  it  is  apparent  that  one 
might  as  well  hope  to  explain  the  Jilneid  by  analyzing 
the  food  that  Virgil  ate,  as  to  account,  by  means  of 
mere  verbal  mechanics,  for  the  miracle  that  has  hap- 
pened among  your  words. 

And  what  is  this  miracle  that  Grammar  and  Syntax 
can  not  explain?  It  is  the  universal  language,  "the 
language  of  all  the  world/'  as  Professor  Woodberry 
has  called  it,  bearing  something  like  the  same  relation 
to  the  language  of  words  that  perfume  bears  to  the 
rose.  It  operates  in  modern  English  or  French  or 
German  or  Spanish  or  Italian  in  accordance  with  the 
same  laws  that  governed  it  in  the  ancient  Sanskrit  or 
Greek.  However  the  historical  tongues  may  develop, 
merge  into  new  tongues  and  cease  to  be,  that  one  mode 
of  human  utterance  remains ;  for  it  is  based  upon  no 
mutable  convention  in  time,  upon  no  chance  of  racial 
triumph  or  defeat,  and  is  unconcerned  with  geographi- 
cal boundary  lines.  It  is  firmly  grounded  in  funda- 
mental human  nature,  and  the  devices  through  which 
it  functions  are  characteristic  of,  and  attain  their 
highest  potency  in,  poetry. 

It  has  been  remarked  that  "we   are   all  islands 

20 


shouting  lies  to  each  other  across  seas  of  misunder- 
standing.7' Stripped  of  its  obvious  hyperbole,  the 
statement  will  be  found  to  contain  an  important  truth. 
From  the  first  conscious  attempt  to  convey  an  urgent 
meaning  by  means  of  onomatopoeic  grunts,  to  the  lat- 
est literary  masterpiece,  language  has  been  an  inade- 
quate means  of  communication ; x  for  always  as  lan- 
guage developed,  the  psychic  complexes  that  consti- 
tute consciousness  became  more  subtle  and  increasing- 
ly difficult  to  express.  Thought  outruns  utterance 
for  the  apparent  reason  that  while  language  has 
developed  under  the  pressure  of  fundamental  human 
need,  the  restless,  dreaming  soul  of  man  has  always 
groped  for  values  unrelated  to  physical  necessity. 
As  Bergson  would  say,  the  basic  structure  of  lan- 
guage is  utilitarian.  Evidence  of  this  is  to  be  found 
in  the  fact  that  the  nose,  a  sense  organ  relatively  un- 
important in  mankind's  struggle  for  survival,  has  no 
vocabulary  of  its  own ;  while  the  eye,  the  ear  and  the 
mouth,  being  of  tremendous  importance  in  the  strug- 
gle to  survive,  are  richly  endowed  with  words. 

Now,  so  long  as  men  communicate  only  such  ideas 
as  are  more  or  less  directly  concerned  with  funda- 
mental human  needs;  so  long  as  men  are  satisfied  to 
discuss  only  certain  phases  of  concrete  reality,  no 
confusion  ensues.  Those  words,  and  their  combina- 
tions, that  are  concerned  immediately  with  the  two 
great  facts  of  human  life  —  food  and  propagation  — 
admit  of  no  misunderstanding.  But  man  is  master 
of  the  earth  solely  because  he  is  gifted  with  the  power 

i  See  F.  W.  H.  Myers '  essay  on  Virgil. 
21 


to  dream  constructively,  transcending  his  physical 
environment ;  and,  accordingly,  the  dictionaries  of  the 
world  record  numerous  attempts,  only  partially  suc- 
cessful, to  express  in  soundi  the  discoveries  that  have 
resulted  from  this  high  adventuring  of  the  human 
soul.  But  it  is  known  that  limitation  may  be  in  itself 
a  means  to  power ;  and  out  of  the  very  inadequacy  of 
language  has  grown  its  supreme  mode  of  expression 
—  which  is  Poetry.  That  Poetry  is  indeed  the  su- 
preme form  of  human  expression  is  amply  evidenced 
by  the  fact  that  in  every  age  and  country  the  racial 
consciousness  has  been  most  fully  realized  through 
the  poet's  art.  Consider  the  Mahabharrata,  Job,  the 
Shah  Nameh,  the  Homeric  poems,  the  Athenian 
dramas,  the  ^Eneid,  The  Divine  Comedy,  Faust,  the 
Plays  of  Shakespeare !  In  passing  it  may  be  interest- 
ing to  note  how  the  theories  of  relativity  and  four- 
dimensional  space  seem  to  support  the  contention  that 
poetry  is  the  supreme  art.  Music,  it  may  be  said, 
exists  in  one  dimension,  Time ;  Painting  in  two  dimen- 
sions with  the  illusion  of  a  third ;  Sculpture,  in  three ; 
while  Poetry  not  only  exists  in  a  three  dimensional 
world,  but  moves  in  it,  thus  adding  a  fourth  dimen- 
sion, Time. 

Now  Poetry,  in  its  technical  aspect,  may  be  defined 
as  a  device  for  communicating  human  experiences 
that,  owing  to  their  super-utilitarian  character,  can 
not  be  definitely  expressed  by  the  mere  juxtaposition 
of  words  in  accordance  with  the  mechanics  of  any 
given  tongue.  Poetry,  in  its  highest  moments,  is  an 
emotional  approximation  of  the  inexpressible ;  a  means 

22 


whereby  men  may  share  with  each  other  the  ancient 
but  never  old  news  of  an  immaterial  world  that  inter- 
penetrates and  glorifies  the  world  of  sense.  The  es- 
sence of  prose  is  direct,  factual  statement.  The 
essence  of  Poetry  is  suggestion.  In  its  characteristic 
function,  Poetry  tells  nothing;  rather  it  induces  the 
mood  of  understanding  by  four  principal  means,  which 
are  as  follows : 

1.  By  the  use  of  symbols. 

2.  By  rhythm,  with  or  without  rhyme. 

3.  By  the  studied  manipulation  of  sound. 

4.  By  appeal  to  memory. 

I  will  give  brief  consideration  to  each  of  these  in 
order  as  stated. 

First,  the  use  of  symbols.  You  have  all  noted  in 
reading  poetry  of  the  higher  order  that  commonplace 
words  are  frequently  used  in  a  special  sense  for  which 
no  authority  can  be  found  in  any  dictionary.  If  you 
will  strike  any  note  on  a  piano,  and  place  your  ear 
close  to  the  strings,  you  will  hear  a  higher,  thinner 
note  growing  out  of  the  one  you  struck  —  a  haunting 
ghost  of  a  sound.  That  overtone  may  be  likened  to 
the  sublimated  meaning  of  a  symbolic  word.  As  an 
illustration,  let  us  consider  the  words  "rose"  and 
"lily,"  both  of  which  have  been  used  so  often  in  this 
heightened  sense  that  they  have  become  haokneyed.1 
Fancy  that  in  your  reading  you  come  upon  the  fol- 
lowing- line : 

"The  roses  and  riots  of  passion,  the  lilies  and 
languors  of  sin. ' ' 

1  See  Woodberry  >s  essay,  ' l  The  Language  of  All  the  World. ' 9 

23 


We  will  suppose  that  you  are  an  extremely  factual 
minded  person,  and  that  your  consciousness  has  not 
yet  been  expanded  to  include  universal  race  experience. 
Being  such  a  person,  you  are  naturally  a  bit  puzzled 
at  this  apparently  unwarranted  association  of  such 
words  as  "rose"  and  "passion/'  "lily"  and  "sin." 
However,  you  are  conscientious,  as  factual  minded 
people  are  likely  to  be,  and  so  you  consult  the  dic- 
tionary. You  turn  to  "rose,"  and  you  find  the  fol- 
lowing: "A  shrub  of  the  genus  Rosa,  or  its  flower, 
found  wild  in  numerous  species  and  cultivated  from 
remote  antiquity."  This  definition  in  no  way  lessens 
your  difficulty;  and  you  read  on  down  the  column, 
learning  much  about  many  kinds  of  roses;  but  at  the 
end,  the  poet's  use  of  the  word  is  quite  asi  puzzling 
as  ever.  You  extend  your  curiosity  to  the  word 
"lily"  —  with  a  similar  result.  Evidently  the  lexi- 
cographer has  withheld  something  of  importance 
about  these  words !  And  what  is  it  that  he  has  with- 
held? Nothing  less  than  the  distilled  essence  of  uni- 
versal human  experience  in  the  twin  mysteries  of  love 
and  death;  and  that  experience  can  not  be  handed 
to  you  by  any  lexicographer,  however  exhaustive  his 
definitions  may  be. 

But  if,  on  the  other  hand,  you  are  one  who  has 
lived  spiritually  with  the  great  ones  of  this  world, 
and  through  them  have  made  the  race  consciousness 
your  own,  you  will  not  turn  to  the  dictionary  upon 
reading  that  seductive  line.  You  will  pause  a  mo- 
ment to  ponder ;  and  in  that  moment  something  won- 
derful will  happen  to  you;  for  a  multitude  of  race 

24 


memories,  more  or  less  vague  perhaps,  but  none  the 
less  compelling,  will  flash  across  your  mind.  The  sub- 
limated joy  and  grief  of  unnumbered  lovers  will  grip 
you  in  that  moment,  and  you  will  be  enriched  with 
the  age-old  cleansing  regret  for  many  who  were  very 
dear  and  are  dead.  For  those  two  little  words,  by 
long  association,  have  become  symbols  of  two  great 
dominating  mysteries  of  life. 

There  is  a  line  of  William  Morris  that  combines  the 
rose  with  another  symbol  of  universal  human  signi- 
ficance, the  moon.  It  has  always  had  a  powerful  ef- 
fect upon  me  though  it  is  extremely  simple.  It  runs 
as  follows: 

' '  Two  red  roses  across  the  moon. ' ' 

Now  I  believe  that  I  am  not  a  whit  more  sentimental 
in  temperament  than  the  most  matter-of-fact  individ- 
ual before  me.  On,  the  contrary,  my  closest  friends 
say  that  I  am  anything  but  a  sentimentalist.  I  live 
close  to  the  ground,  and  it  is  my  habit  to  insist  upon 
the  importance  of  the  sense  of  common  things.  But 
whenever  that  line  occurs  to  me,  I  have  a  moment  of 
enchantment.  Roses  and  the  moon!  Whoever  has 
been  young  will  be  sure  to  get  something  of  a  thrill 
from  that  combination  of  words  —  a  thrill  in  no  way 
to  be  explained  by  floriculture  on  the  one  hand  and 
astronomy  on  the  other !  But  he  who  has  been  young 
with  the  youth  of  all  the  world  shall  have  the  better 
understanding  and  the  greater  thrill. 

I  do  not  wish  to  leave  the  impression  that  I  am 
particularly  interested  in  the  symbols  of  erotic  exper- 

25 


ience.  I  have  chosen  these  examples  merely  because 
they  are  hackneyed,  and  therefore  obvious.  One 
might  go  on  for  days  analyzing  symbols  of  equal 
power,  relating  to  every  phase  of  human  experience. 
There  are  thousands  of  such  words  that  have  been 
charged  with  the  joys  and  sorrows  of  the  race  by  a 
hundred  generations  of  song.  Each  is  like  a  little 
door  opened  suddenly  upon  long  vistas  of  life ;  and 
he  who  looks  through  them  shall  be  glorified  by  the 
consciousness  of  his  close  kinship  with  all  men  in  all 
times.  And  in  every  case  it  will  be  found  that  we  are 
indebted  to  the  sorcery  of  the  poets  for  these  en- 
chanted words.  One  can  not  know  any  language  well 
unless  he  become  familiar  with  its  verbal  overtones; 
and,  therefore,  to  neglect  the  study  of  Poetry  is 
equivalent  to  limiting  the  range  of  communicable 
states  of  consciousness  and  to  make  impossible  a  full 
realization  of  the  very  purpose  of  language. 

The  second  in  our  list  of  devices  through  which 
Poetry  functions  as  the  economy  of  expression,  is 
rhythm.  Everyone  must  have  noted  that,  whether 
we  are  concerned  with  forms  in  time  or  forms  in 
space,  symmetry  is  the  prime  requisite  of  survival. 
Symmetry  may  be  defined  roughly  as  the  balance  of 
all  parts  with  reference  to  the  center  of  the  whole. 
In  accordance  with  some  inscrutable  law,  all  things, 
in  the  universal  struggle  to  survive,  display  a  tend- 
ency to  become  round.  The  circle  is  undoubtedly  the 
absolute.  A  regularly  curved  line,  returning  upon 
itself,  is  the  circle  in  space;  periodicity  is  the  circle 
in  time.  The  former  is  manifest  in  the  representative 

26 


arts  and  in  the  objective  world  generally;  the  latter 
is  dominant  in  the  arts  of  music  and  poetry  and  in 
the  subjective  realm.  That  which  is  not  symmetrical 
is  not  thoroughly  efficient  and  cannot  endure.  In  ac- 
cordance with  cosmic  law,  a  tentative  form  must 
approximate  roundness  or  it  ceases  to  exist  as  a  thing 
in  itself  and  becomes  a  part  of  some  symmetrical 
scheme  that  absorbs  it.  This  idea  may  be  extended 
into  all  fields.  It  is  true  in  mechanics,  morals,  state- 
craft, art.  You  cannot  overwork  the  conception.  The 
creative  force  of  the  universe  seems  to  move  most 
efficiently  in  a  curve  that  tends  towards  a  "perfect 
return"  upon  itself.  We  have  been  hearing  a  great 
deal  about  "free  form  verse"  of  late  years;  but  there 
can  be  no  such  thing  as  free  form  in  the  sense  intended. 
Form  can  not  be  conceived  as  free,  simply  because  it  is 
not  essentially  arbitrary,  but  is  determined  in  accor- 
dance with  inexorable  law  —  the  same  that  determines 
the  course  of  the  sun,  the  roundness  of  the  celestial 
bodies,  the  beating  of  the  heart,  the  ebb  and  flow  of 
the  tide.  It  was  not  through  whim  or  chance  that 
poets  first  chanted  in  rhythm.  Ehythm  in  poetry  is 
not  an  artificial  device,  but  a  natural  phenomenon. 
It  is  no  less  than  the  artistic  manifestation  of  power's 
tendency  to  return  upon  itself,  to  make  cycles. 

All  power  is  rhythmic.  All  effective  machinery 
acts  in  rhythm.  An  engine  is  losing  power  the  mo- 
ment it  ceases  to  act  rhythmically.  At  that  moment 
when  human  utterance  reaches  the  height  of  expres- 
siveness, it  begins  to  swing  into  measure.  An  Indian 
squaw  in  the  grip  of  a  great  passion  sways  her  body 

27 


back  and  forth,  and  her  voice  becomes  rhythmic.  The 
efficiency  of  an  army  is  increased  by  the  drum-beat. 
A  large  body  of  soldiers,  marching  over  a  long  bridge, 
must  break  into  rout  step,  lest  the  structure  be  en- 
dangered by  rhythm. 

Poetry  is  the  economy  of  human  expression.  It 
was  first  expressed  rhythmically  because  in  order  to 
achieve  the  utmost  economy  —  in  order  to  be  poetry  — 
it  was  obliged  to  be  symmetrical  in  the  time  sense, 
just  as  great  representative  art  must  be  rhythmic  in 
the  space  sense. 

Khyme  is  not,  of  course,  an  essential;  but,  when 
skilfully  used,  it  is  of  very  great  value  in  the  economy 
of  poetry ;  for  it  serves  to  emphasize  the  law  of  period- 
icity, and  is  a  legitimate  means  of  heightening  poetic 
effect.  Perhaps  its  greatest  value  to  the  craftsman, 
who  by  virtue  of  a  long  and  patient  apprenticeship 
has  become  master  of  his  tools,  is  to  be  found  in  the 
increased  difficulty  of  composition  it  entails.  For  it 
forces  the;  poet  to  give  the  utmost  attention  to  every 
syllable  in  his  line  and  compels  him  to  examine  every 
possible  synonym  in  the  language  that  he  may  find  the 
one  word  exactly  suited  to  the  purpose  of  the  moment. 
I  have  often  found  occasion  to  compare  the  works  of 
various  modern  poets  of  high  rank,  with  this  idea  in 
mind ;  and  I  have  found  that  in  poetical  works  of  con- 
siderable length,  those  that  are  unrhymed  are  more 
often  diffuse  than  those  that  are  rhymed;  that,  as  a 
rule,  more  is  actually  told  in  a  dozen  rhymed  lines 
than  in  the  same  number  of  lines  without  rhyme. 

It  is  the  fashion  of  the  moment  among  a  certain 

28 


class  of  would-be  poets,  seeking  a  short  and  easy  trail 
up  the  Parnassian  steep,  to  speak  of  rhyme  and  defin- 
ite rhythmic  pattern  as  trammels.  Doubtless  both 
are  such  to  the  unskilled,  and  quite  properly  so.  But 
to  a  craftsman  who  has  spent,  let  us  say,  a  quarter  of 
a  century  in  struggling  to  master  them,  rhythmic  pat- 
tern and  rhyme  are  the  very  sources  of  artistic  free- 
dom ;  for  genuine  freedom  can  not  exist  except  within 
the  confines  of  inescapable  law.  Doubtless  the  pacing 
horse,  when  he  first  goes  into  training,  is  impatient 
with  his  hobbles,  feeling  that  he  could  travel  better 
if  he  were  only  allowed  to  gallop.  But  when  he  has 
mastered  the  technique  of  pacing,  his  hobbles  no  long- 
er hinder  him.  He  finds  himself  freer  and  his  effi- 
ciency greater  by  virtue  of  his  very  limitations.  So 
it  is  with  the  skilled  craftsman  in  verse. 

But  we  have  not  yet  touched  upon  the  chief  value 
of  rhythm  in  the  dynamics  of  poetry.  "We  have  noted 
that  it  is  the  prime  function  of  this  subtler  phase  of 
language  to  induce  a  mood  of  understanding  rather 
than  to  tell  by  direct  factual  statement.  That  is  to 
say,  the  characteristic  appeal  of  poetry  is  to  the  sub- 
conscious mind.  Every  student  knows  that  at  those 
moments  when  the  intellectual  process  is  at  its  height, 
the  normal  consciousness  is  subdued,  the  objective 
world  fades  away,  and  the  sense  of  time  is  lost.  Un- 
der such  circumstances  I  have  known  an  hour  to  pass 
in  what  seemed  to  be  an  instant.  Whenever  the  mind 
works  at  its  maximum  intensity,  this  phenomenon  is 
likely  to  occur;  and  it  is  out  of  just  such  mental 
states,  apparently  divorced  from  time  and  space,  that 

29 


all  the  beauty  and  wonder  of  the  man-made  world 
have  come.  In  considering  the  lapse  of  normal  con- 
sciousness during  periods  of  intense  concentration, 
one  comes  very  near  to  the  definition  of  genius,  which 
F.  W.  H.  Myers  believed  to  be  a  predisposition  to 
subliminal  uprushes. 

Now  since  it  is  the  function  of  poetry  to  release  the 
potentialities  of  the  subconscious  mind,  it  is  apparent 
that  any  device  calculated  to  subdue*  the  normal  con- 
sciousness must  be  of  extreme  importance  in  the  poetic 
process ;  and  it  is  well  known  that  rhythm  has  a  pow- 
erful hypnotic  effect.  All  mothers  in  all  times  and 
countries  have  instinctively  understood  this. 

The  third  in  our  list  of  poetic  devices  is  the  manip- 
ulation of  sound.  Often  in  well  wrought  poems  it 
will  be  noted  that  the  rhythm,  which  is  determined  by 
syllabic  quantities  in  the  classic  tongues  and  by  accent 
in  most  modern  languages,  is  not  the  only  one.  There 
are  subtler  rhythms,  not  concerned  with  the  rules  of 
scansion,  and  these  proceed  concurrently  with  the 
primary  rhythm  somewhat  after  the  manner  of  melo- 
dies in  counterpoint.  One  of  these  secondary  rhythms 
is  realized  by  a  skillful  shifting  of  the  caesura  so  as  to 
give,  within  the  regular  beat,  a  sense  of  steadily  in- 
creasing wave  lengths  of  sound,  culminating  in  a  tonal 
climax  and  falling  back  to  begin  anew.  The  effect 
upon  an  ear  made  sensitive  by  long  acquaintance 
with  poetry  is  like  that  of  a  nightwind  about  the  eaves 
or  of  the  accumulating  force  of  waves  upon  a  beach. 
It  is  probable  that  most  readers  of  poetry,  though 
they  may  be  more  or  less  moved  by  this  ghostly 

30 


rhythm,  are  quite  unconscious  of  the  means  employed 
by  the  poet  to  produce  the  effect.  Tennyson's  blank 
verse,  especially  in  The  Idylls,  admirably  illustrates 
the  value  of  this  secondary  rhythm ;  while  the  rhymed 
couplets  of  Dryden  and  Pope  demonstrate  the  weari- 
some monotony  that  inevitably  results  from  the  lack 
of  it. 

There  is  still  another  minor  rhythm  which  is  de- 
termined by  the  designed  recurrence  of  vowel  and 
consonant  sounds  within  the  line.  This  is  so  subtle 
that  it  hardly  admits  of  discussion  here,  and  is  better 
left  to  the  sense  of  the  individual  reader,  though  it  is 
none  the  less  real  and  none  the  less  important  because 
of  its  subtlety.  It  is  possible,  however,  to  give  direc- 
tion to  the  curiosity  of  the  student  unfamiliar  with 
the  subtleties  of  verse  construction  by  stating  that 
Browning  generally  lacked  the  sense  for  this  nice 
adjustment  of  sound  in  varying  tonal  patterns,  while 
Swinburne  had  it  in  the  highest  degree,  for  which 
reason,  largely,  his  verse  is  the  most  musical  and 
seductive  in  our  language.  This  studied  arrangement 
of  vowels  and  consonants  into  what  one  might  term 
a  sound  mosaic  is  valuable  not  only  for  the  ease  with 
which  poetry  so  written  may  be  voiced,  but  also  be- 
cause it  furnishes  a  tonal  background  for  those  occa- 
sional discords  which  the  poet  must  use  by  way  of 
shocking  the  normal  consciousness  awake  to  some 
momentary  phase  of  ruder  actuality  in  the  subject 
matter.  This  latter  phase  of  poetic  strategy  proper- 
ly falls  under  the  head  of  onomatopoeia. 

Almost  any  eighth  grade  pupil  is  able  to  give  the 

31 


stock  example  of  onomatopoeia,  which  is  Poe's 
" Bells"  —  an  altogether  wretched  example,  vying  in 
blatant  obviousness  with  South ey's  verbose  disserta- 
tion on  the  disorderly  conduct  of  the  waters  at  Lodore. 
Perhaps  my  deep-seated  dislike  for  the  "  Bells "  may 
be  traced  to  a  teacher  of  expression  I  once  had ;  for  I 
have  not  forgotten  the  burning  sense  of  shame  I  ex- 
perienced at  those  times  when  I  was  forced  to  take 
the  floor,  labor  at  an  imaginary  bell  rope  and  chortle 
that  inane  combination  of  monotonous  sounds  amidst 
gales  of  laughter  from  the  class.  I  have  called  it  a 
wretched  example  of  onomatopoeia  for  the  reason  that 
the  device,  which  may  be  of  great  service  in  the 
economy  of  poetry  when  employed  with  subtlety  and 
for  a  definite  purpose,  is  here  used  by  Poe  for  the  sake 
of  the  sound  merely,  and  does  not  serve  to  communi- 
cate either  an  idea  or  a  mood.  Nothing  of  importance 
is  accomplished  by  contriving  to  combine  in  a  metrical 
composition  a  considerable  number  of  words  that  hap- 
pen to  rhyme  with  "bell."  In  "Ulalume,"  however, 
Poe  was  wonderfully  successful  in  inducing  a  distinct 
mood  by  means  of  appropriate  sounds. 

Some  of  the  finest  examples  of  onomatopoeia  that  I 
know  are  to  be  found  in  the  Greek  poets,  and  the 
most  notable  of  these  are,  strangely  enough,  passed 
without  comment  in  all  of  the  texts  with  which  I  am 
acquainted.  You  who  have  read  the  Agamemnon  of 
J^schylus  will  recall  the  first  speech  of  the  "King  of 
Men"  upon  his  return  to  his  native  Argos  after  the 
fall  of  Ilium.  He  describes  in  a  few  swift  phrases 
the  destruction  of  the  Trojan  city,  and  in  his  descrip- 

32 


tion  these  lines  occur.  I  will  give  them  first  in  very 
inadequate  English : 

"Rave  Ruin's  whirlwinds;  and  the  ashes,  dying  with 

them, 
Belch  forth  fat  blasts  of  wealth." 

You  will  note  that  the  poet  is  concerned  for  the  mo- 
ment with  the  puffing  and  spurting  of  the  tongues  of 
flame  from  the  ruins  of  a  great  conflagration.  Now 
observe  the  manner  in  which  the  greatest  poet  of  them 
all  —  save  only  one  —  has  suited  the  sound  to  the 
sense.  In  the  original  the  words  run  thus : 

"Spodos  propempei  pionas  ploutou  pnoas." 

There  is  aline  in  the  "CEdipus  Tyrannus"  of 
Sophocles  that  is  quite  as  remarkable  for  onomato- 
poeic effect.  It  occurs  in  the  Messenger's  speech 
descriptive  of  the  suicide  of  Jocasta.  Many  of  you 
will  remember  that  a  portion  of  that  speech  is  con- 
cerned with  incest,  unwittingly  committed  by  the 
unhappy  Queen.  Gilbert  Murray's  version  runs  as 
follows : 

"But  we  heard 

Her  voice  within,  crying  to  him  of  old, 
Her  Laius  long  dead ;  and  things  untold 
Of  the  old  kiss  unf  orgotten,  that  should  bring 
The  lover's  death  and  leave  the  loved  a  thing 
Of  horror,  yea  a  field  beneath  the  plow 
For  sire  and  son ;  then  wailing  bitter  low 
Across  the  bed  of  deaths  unreconciled, 
Husband  from  husband  born,  and  child  from  child — ' ' 

33 


It  is  the  last  line  that  is  onomatopoeic  in  the  original 
—  a  line  concerned  wjth  a,  mood  of  horror  and 
disgust.  Now  what  sound  in  nature  is  more  likely  to 
convey  such  a  mood  than  the  sound  of  a  frog 's  croak- 
ing ?  It  is  that  which  Sophocles  used  for  the  produc- 
tion of  the  desired  effect.  And  here  is  the  line  in 
Greek : 

"Ex  andros  andra  kai  tekn'   'ek  teknon  tekoi." 

Another  striking  example  from  the  ancient  Greek 
is  to  be  found  in  one  of  the  Sapphic  fragments.  It  is 
descriptive  of  the  moaning  of  cool  waters  through  an 
apple  orchard  on  a  sleep  day.  Note  the  reiteration 
of  the  moaning  sound : 

"Amphi  de  psuchron  keladei  di'  usdon 
Malinon  aithussomenon  de  phullon 
Koma  katarei." 

A  similar  example,  producing  the  sound  of  wind,  is 
to  be  found  in  Book  II,  line  441,  of  the  Georgics. 

There  are  many  good  examples  in  English;  as,  for 
instance,  in  that  portion  of  Tennyson's  "Passing  of 
Arthur, ' '  where  Bedivere  bears  the  dying  king  to  the 
barge.  There  one  hears  the  clash  of  the  knight's 
harness  and  "the  dint  of  armed  heels"  down  "the  last 
hard  footsteps  of  that  iron  crag. ' '  Perhaps  the  most 
remarkable  effect  in  the  passage  cited  is  the  sudden 
shifting  from  consonant  to  vowel  sounds  when  Bedi- 
vere first  sees  "the1  level  lake  and  the  long  glories  of 
the  winter  moon." 

In  a  recent  poem,  descriptive  of  a  prairie  rain  storm, 

34 


we  find  the  sound  of  distant  thunder  mumbling  in  the 
sweltering  hush,  as  follows: 

"What  mean  yon  cries  where  the  flat  world  dies 
In  hazy  rotundity  — 
Tumult  a-swoon,  silence  a-croon, 
Lapped  in  profundity  — 
Bane  or  boon  or  only  the  drone  of  a  fever  rune  ? ' ' 

But  onomatopoeia  is  concerned  not  only  with  the 
imitation  of  sound;  it  is  also  capable  of  intensifying 
the  hearer's  sense  of  motion.  In  the  fifth  JEneid, 
line  481,  we  find  perhaps  the  most  famous  example  of 
the  device  employed  to  this  end.  The  line  to  which 
I  refer  describes  the  felling  of  an  ox  with  a  blow,  and 
by  shortening  the  quantity  of  the  proper  syllable  Ver- 
gil succeeded  in  giving  a  vivid  sense  of  the  falling 
weight.  One  of  our  modern  poets  has  suggested  the 
hoof  beats  of  galloping  horses  in  the  movement  of  a 
line,  which  runs  thus: 

"The  might  of  the  Mede,  the  hate  of  the  Hun, 
the  bleak  North  wind  of  the  Goth." 

I  have  often  heard  students  of  poetry  speak  of 
"poetic  ornament";  and  doubtless  many  regard 
onomatopoeia  as  chiefly  ornamental.  But  it  must  be 
understood  that  poetry  is  not  fancy-work,  primarily 
designed  to  please.  It  is  a  mode  of  human  utterance 
existing  for  the  sole  purpose  of  communicating  states 
of  consciousness  beyond  the  power  of  factual  statement 
to  express.  Ornament  for  its  own  sake  has  no  place 
in  poetry.  Only  those  devices  may  be  regarded  as 

35 


legitimate  which  serve  to  increase  the  hearer's  re- 
ceptivity. In  the  language  of  poetry  adequacy 
alone  is  beauty.  I  am  aware  that  this  statement 
smacks  of  literary  heresy;  but  a  close  examination  of 
its  ultimate  meaning  will  reveal  its  truth. 

The  fourth  principal  means  in  the  economy  of 
poetry  is  the  appeal  to  memory,  and  it  is  by  far  the 
most  important  of  them  all,  because  it  has  to  do  with 
the  very  subject-matter  of  the  art.  There  are  two 
kinds  of  memory  —  that  of  the  individual  and  that  of 
the  race.  That  poetry  which  appeals  to  the  individual 
solely  through  his  recollection  of  his  personal  reac- 
tions to  the  narrow  environment  of  everyday  life,  is 
minor  poetry;  while  that  which  appeals  to  both  the 
individual  memory  and  to  that  all-embracing  race- 
memory  —  historical  and  literary  tradition  —  is  major 
poetry.  It  follows  that  the  power  which  poetry  will 
exert  upon  a  given  individual  will  be  in  direct  pro- 
portion to  his  ability  to  respond  to  the  memory  ap- 
peal. This  explains  the  popular  success  of  such  poets 
as  Riley,  and  also  the  general  neglect  of  the  great 
world-poets  whom  everyone  will  praise  and  few  will 
read.  The  average  person  is  fairly  rich  in  individual 
memories,  but  poor  in  race  memory  —  thanks  to  an 
educational  system  that  emphasizes  the  so-called 
"practical." 

For  the  manner  in  which  the  memory  appeal  func- 
tions in  poetry,  we  have  a  close  analogy  in  the  wire- 
less telegraph.  When,  for  instance,  the  faint  electric 
thrill  has  traveled  across  the  Atlantic,  say  from  Ire- 
land to  Newfoundland,  it  is  too  weak  to  operate  the 

36 


recording  instrument  at  the  receiving  station.  For 
this  reason,  in  the  early  days  of  the  wireless,  a  device 
called  "a  coherer "  was  employed.  It  consisted  of  a 
glass  tube  filled  with  iron  filings.  Through  this  the 
faint  electric  thrill  passed,  and  as  it  did  so,  caused 
the  filings  to  cohere,  thus  completing  the  circuit  be- 
tween the  recording  instrument  and  a  powerful  ground 
battery.  It  was  the  ground  battery  that  did  the  work. 
In  the  dynamics  of  poetry,  to  apply  the  analogy,  the 
written  or  spoken  word  is  the  coherer  that  conducts 
the  poetic  suggestion,  and  serves  to  hurl  across  the 
mind  of  the  hearer  the  latent,  and  often  unsuspected, 
power  with  which  his  soul  is  charged.  It  is  the  soul 
of  the  recipient  that  must  complete  the  work  of  won- 
der; and  thus  precious  messages  are  passed  from 
consciousness  to  consciousness  across  the  "seas  of  mis- 
understanding. ' ' 

I  have  given  a  necessarily  brief  outline  of  the 
dynamics  of  poetry ;  but  before  I  close  it  seems  neces- 
sary that  I  should  give  some  consideration  to  the 
poetry  of  our  time.  There  is  every  reason  for  believ- 
ing that  we  have  entered  upon  one  of  the  most  notable 
poetic  periods  since  the  Eevival  of  Learning  reached 
its  supreme  flowering  in  Elizabethan  England.  Most 
of  you  here  will  remember  how,  a  decade  ago,  poets 
were  generally  regarded  with  suspicion  if  not  with 
actual  hostility.  We  were  nothing  if  not  "practical," 
and  we  were  well  convinced  that  the  business  of  being 
a  poet  was  hardly  a  man-sized  job.  We  were  hustlers, 
and  we  had  no  time  for  nonsense.  Also,  we  had  no 
time  to  stop  and  ask  ourselves  just  what  all  the 

37 


hustle  was  about,  and  where  we  thought  we  were 
going,  and  why  we  were  in  such  mad  haste  to  get 
there,  and  what  we  intended  to  do  when  we  reached 
our  destination.  In  order  to  explain  the  curious 
obsession  under  which  we  then  labored,  it  is  necessary 
to  go  back  to  the  French  Kevolution. 

That  great  social  upheaval  was  essentially  a  Bour- 
geois revolt,  and  it  resulted  in  the  ascendancy  of  the 
trading  class  throughout  the  Western  World.  The 
actual  status  of  the  Proletariat  was  but  little  altered. 
It  was  not  the  triumph  of  Democracy,  as  many  still 
think,  but  of  Individualism,  which  is  the  direct  op- 
posite of  Democracy;  for  Individualism  places  the 
social  emphasis  upon  the  rights  of  the  individual, 
while  Democracy,  if  it  is  ever  to  be  realized,  must 
stress  the  duties  of  the  individual  that  the  rights  of 
the  group  and  the  individual  may  be  conserved.  The 
former  leads  naturally  to  the  conception  of  liberty  as 
license ;  the  latter,  to  the  conception  of  liberty  as  law. 

For  awhile  the  new  social  order,  based  upon  the 
laissez  faire  theory  of  economics,  worked  well,  for  it 
offered  an  enormous  stimulus  to  personal  initiative. 
As  a  result,  if  we  are  to  regard  progress  as  chiefly 
a  material  process,  the  world  leaped  forward  farther 
in  four  generations  than  it  had  crept  in  all  the  cen- 
turies since  the  fall  of  the  Eoman  Empire.  But  very 
soon  it  began  to  be  evident,  not  only  to  the  seers  who 
sit  above  the  crowd,  but  even  to  the  many  who  labored 
much  and  had  little  time  to  think,  that  something 
was  fundamentally  wrong  with  this  new  social  order 
in  which  the  individual  might  freely  seek  his  own 

38 


selfish  ends  without  regard  for  the  general  welfare 
of  society,  so  long  as  he  paid  his  taxes  and  kept  within 
the  bounds  of  certain  statutes  that  were  virtually  x 
little  more  than  police  regulations  designed  to  keep 
some  semblance  of  order  in  the  universal  scramble 
for  the  things  of  this  world.     Men  began  to  see  how 
poverty  increased  among  the  many,  how  huge  fortunes 
accumulated  with  the  few,  and  how  the  souls  of  men  N 
were  being  warped  and  stunted  at  both  extremes  of  / 
the  social  scale ;  for  too  much  is  quite  as  deadly  as  too 
little.     Out  of  this  state  of  affairs  there  grew  up  a 
cynical  philosophy  of  life,  based  upon  a  purely  mate- 
rial scale  of  values.     With  the  doctrine  of  the  Naza- 
rene  upon  their  lips,  men  acted  upon  the  principle 
that  "he  may  take  who  has  the  power,  and  he  may     ^ 
keep  who  can." 

Nor  were  men  to  be  condemned  for  espousing  this 
philosophy;  for  what  we  believe  to  be  true  is  de- 
termined almost  wholly  by  the  social  atmosphere  in 
which  we  live.  The  individual  conscience  is  only 
rarely  able  to  rise  above  the  prevailing  social  con- 
science of  the  time. 

Panics,  strikes,  inter-class  hatred  —  these  in  every 
nation  of  the  Western  World  were  the  early  and  sin- 
ister fruits  of  this  philosophy  of  self-seeking.  Had  it 
been  possible  to  confine  the  operation  of  that  mate- 
rialistic view  of  life  to  the  struggle  between  indi- 
viduals, the  pot  of  social  discord  might  have  sim- 
mered on  for  generations.  But  it  could  not  long  re- 
main so.  Powerful  predatory  groups  grew  up  in 
every  land  and  to  a  greater  or  less  extent  controlled 

39 


the  governments  of  the  nations.  Between  these  groups 
a  pitiless  struggle  for  the  domination  of  the  economic 
system  of  the  world  inevitably  followed.  Owing  to 
her  geographic  situation,  her  peculiar  genius  for  or- 
ganization and  her  highly  developed  technical  skill, 
quite  as  much  as  to  her  temperamental  bias,  Germany 
first  forced  to  its  logical  conclusion  that  impossible 
philosophy  of  life ;  and  she  became  the  outlaw  of  the 
nations,  the  huge  mad  dog  of  the  world. 

Though  many  of  us  may  not  have  known  it  at  the 
time,  what  we  beheld  in  August,  1914,  was  a  tremend- 
ous demonstration  of  an  ethical  fallacy  that,  much  as 
we  might  feel  disinclined  to  confess  it,  had  come  to  be 
almost  universally  accepted  as  true.  It  was  the  fal- 
lacy involved  in  the  statement  that  "he  may  take  who 
has  the  power,  and  he  may  keep  who  can."  So  long 
as  it  remained  in  the  realm  of  individual  struggle  for 
the  means  of  life,  we  could  not  all  see  it  for  the  hideous 
thing  it  always  was.  But  when,  greatly  magnified, 
it  was  suddenly  projected  upon  the  map  of  a  con- 
tinent as  upon  a  vast  canvas;  when  we  saw  its  ulti- 
mate meaning  scrawled  large  in  the  smoke  and  flame 
of  countless  homes ;  heard  it  voiced  in  the  hoarse  roar 
of  looting  millions,  in  the  cries  of  dying  thousands, 
and  in  the  wailing  of  whole  peoples  over  their  multitu- 
dinous dead,  then  at  last  many  of  us  began  to  under- 
stand. What  the  slow,  pitiless  years  of  Man's  in- 
humanity to  Man  could  not  teach  us,  the  great  catas- 
trophe taught.  After  all  these  centuries  of  lip  ser- 
vice we  begin  to  see  at  last  how  he  who  taught  that  a 
man  must  be  his  brother's  keeper  and  that  one  must 

40 


love  one's  neighbor  as  oneself,  was  no  impractical 
dreamer  mouthing  pretty  sentiments  for  Sunday  re- 
petition, but  an  intensely  practical  thinker  pronounc- 
ing the  fundamental  law  of  all  sane  human  relations. 

It  may  seem  to  many  of  you,  at  this  point,  that  I 
have  wandered  far  from  my  theme,  but,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  I  have  not  left  it  for  a  moment ;  for  Poetry, 
being  a  means  of  communication  in  the  higher  realms 
of  human  consciousness,  is  a  social  phenomenon,  and 
its  status  and  trend  are  socially  determined. 

My  aim  has  been  to  give  as  briefly  as  possible  the 
etiology  of  that  materialistic  malady  which  had  fas- 
tened upon  society  before  the  war,  and  which  had 
resulted  in  a  conspicuous  general  neglect  of  the  higher 
values.  Now,  while  future  historians  will,  no  doubt, 
point  to  August,  1914,  as  the  division  point  between 
the  two  world-conceptions  of  organization  —  Individ- 
ualism, with  its  materialistic  bias,  and  Democracy, 
with  its  distinct  spritual  emphasis  —  yet  no  great 
social  change  is  ever  so  abruptly  realized.  The  cap- 
ture of  Constantinople  by  the  Turks  in  1453  is  gener- 
ally given  as  the  opening  date  of  the  Renaissance, 
but  the  new  spirit  had  been  abroad  in  the  world  some 
years  before  that  event.  Similarly,  the  reaction 
against  economic  individualism  and  its  corollary,  ma- 
terialism, had  been  felt  long  before  the  catastrophe 
of  an  impossible  social  system  appalled  the  world  in 
1914.  The  rapid  growth  of  Socialism  and  Syndical- 
ism were  symptoms  of  that  reaction.  Science,  that 
had  begun  by  denying  whatever  could  not  be  weighed 
and  measured,  had  actually  undertaken  to  prove  by 

41 


experiment  the  survival  of  the  ego  after  the  disso- 
lution of  the  body,  and  had  gone  far  in  that  direc- 
tion. The  world  had  become  uneasy  as  a  hive  of 
bees  about  to  swarm ;  and  suddenly  all  over  the  world 
poets  sprang  up  literally  by  hundreds,  and  volumes 
of  poetry  began  to  sell  as  only  sensational  novels  had 
sold  before.  This  was  one  of  the  most  profoundly 
significant  symptoms  of  the  social  change  that  was 
rapidly  preparing  in  the  world.  Once  more  men  had 
found  materialism  intolerable;  once  more  the  world 
had  come  vaguely  to  realize  the  ancient  truth  that 
Man  can  not  live  by  bread  alone.  It  was  as  though 
a  spiritual  springtime  had  come  upon  a  world  grown 
weary  of  a  long  winter.  Everywhere  there  were 
singing  voices.  Some  few  were  the  voices  of  night- 
ingales ;  most  were  the  voices  of  mocking  birds ;  and 
very  many,  it  must  be  said,  were  no  more  than  the 
tuneless  voices  of  crows.  But  when  even  crows  at- 
tempt to  sing,  then  summer  must  indeed  be  on  the 
way! 

Now  while  it  can  no  longer  be  doubted  that  we  have 
entered  upon  a  great  poetic  period,  it  can  not  yet  be 
said  that  the  poetic  consciousness  of  the  time  has 
been  wholly  freed  from  the  baneful  influence  of  the 
age  that  is  passing;  for,  as  I  have  remarked,  the 
status  and  trend  of  poetry  are  socially  determined, 
and  society  is  still  in  the  penumbral  region  of  transi- 
tion from  Individualism  to  Democracy.  Accordingly, 
we  have  long  been,  and  still  are,  confronted  with  the 
phenomenon  of  impressionism  in  nearly  every  field  of 
intellectual  and  spiritual  endeavor. 

42 


At  the  risk  of  taking  more  time  than  has  been  al- 
lotted to  me,  I  must  give  some  consideration  to  this 
significant  phase  of  the  contemporary  trend,  for  I 
believe  it  is  generally  misinterpreted. 

Impressionism  has  been  defined  as  the  tendency  to 
repudiate  all  standards  of  judgment  (which  are  the 
result  of  the  accumulated  experience  of  the  race) 
and  to  set  up  individual  caprice  as  a  guide.1  It  is 
simply  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  reflex  of  econom- 
ic individualism.  It  is  anarchy  in  the  realm  of  mind, 
just  as  the  laissez  faire  theory  of  economics  is  anarchy 
in  the  realm  of  matter.  We  find  this  spirit  at  work 
in  contemporary  art,  philosophy,  poetry,  criticism, 
morals  and  religion.  It  has  been  misunderstood  and 
highly  praised  in  the  intuitional  philosophy  of  \ 
Bergson  and  in  the  insanities  of  the  more  blatant  / 
writers  of  free  verse.  Some  six  or  seven  years  ago/ 
an  exhibition  of  Cubist  and  Futurist  paintings  was 
held  in  various  large  cities  of  the  country.  Many 
of  us  went  to  satisfy  our  curiosity  and  some  of  us 
remained  to  laugh.  But  it  was  no  laughing  matter; 
for  out  of  those  grotesque  daubs  already  leered  the 
hideous  spirit  of  disorganization  that  was  even  then 
driving  us  on  to  an  unthinkable  catastrophe.  The 
same  spirit  was  then,  and  is  still,  at  work  in  the  so- 
called  poetry  of  a  dozen  fantastic  schools. 

It  has  been  the  claim  of  these  misguided  enthus- 
iasts and  poseurs  that  they  are  writing  democratic 

i  Irving  Babbit.  Modern  French  Masters  of  Criticism. 
It  seems  to  the  writer  that  Prof.  Babbitt,  in  common  with 
a  great  many  others,  confuses  Individualism  and  Democracy. 

43 


poetry;  whereas,  their  product  is  so  exclusively  aris- 
tocratic, as  someone  has  aptly  remarked,  that  in  the 
majority  of  cases  no  one  but  the  authors  can  tell  with 
any  degree  of  certainty  just  what  it  is  the  authors 
are  trying  to  communicate.  Such  so-called  poetry 
may  be  considered  democratic  only  in  the  very  special 
sense  that  nearly  everybody  seems  to  be  writing  it; 
nor  is  this  a  matter  for  marvel,  for  if  each  individ- 
ual is  to  set  up  his  own  standards  of  judgment,  a  long 
and  faithful  apprenticeship  is  no  longer  necessary,  and 
anyone  may  produce  his  own  poetry  for  home  con- 
sumption. For  my  part,  I  am  quite  willing  that  this 
should  be  done;  with  the  proviso,  however,  that  the 
product  shall  be  consumed  at  home ! 

As  a  reaction  against  a  barren  formalism,  the 
"new"  poetry,  as  it  is  called,  will  no  doubt  serve  a 
good  purpose  in  the  end;  for  experimentation  is  al- 
ways necessary  in  a  universe  where  rigidity  is  death. 
But  formlessness  can  not  survive;  and  already  the 
inevitable  reaction  seems  to  be  setting  in.  Thanks 
to  the  abnormal  pressure  of  war-conditions,  we  have 
been  driving  in  the  general  direction  of  Democracy 
(though  we  are  still  very  far  from  it)  —  a  form  of 
social  organization  never  as  yet  realized  upon  this 
planet.  Contrary  to  the  opinions  of  many,  Democ- 
racy connotes  no  free-and-easy  mode  of  life,  but  in- 
tensive organization,  the  universal  reign  of  law  in 
the  interest  of  the  race  as  a  whole.  As  we  near  the 
realization  of  that  supreme  social  concept,  our  whole 
view  of  life  and,  consequently,  of  art,  will  be  cor- 
respondingly modified.  We  shall  come  to  insist  more 

44 


and  more  upon  experts  in  all  things.  Eespect  for 
standards,  love  of  order,  will  return.  The  petty  per- 
sonalism,  that  has  long  dominated  us,  will  die  away. 
Our  poets  will  achieve  the  objective  view  of  the  world 
of  men  and  things  —  and  it  is  out  of  that  view  that 
all  great  art,  as  all  great  life,  must  grow. 


45 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

THE  DIVINE  ENCHANTMENT 

A  philosophical  poem  of  about  1200  lines,  dealing  with 
the  birth  of  Jesus  Christna.  Written  in  1897  and  1898. 
New  York:  James  T.  White  $  Co,  1900.  Cloth,  46  pages. 
The  greater  portion  of  the  only  edition  of  this  book  was 
called  in  by  the  author  and  burned. 

THE  LONESOME  TRAIL 

Twenty  short  stories  of  the  Early  West.  New  York  and 
London:  John  Lane  Company,  1907.  Cloth,  Frontispiece 
by  F.  E.  Schoonover,  30$  pages. 

A  BUNDLE  OF  MYRRH 

A  sequence  of  thirty-three  lyrics.  New  York:  The  Out- 
ing Publishing  Company,  1907.  Decorated  boards.  Cover 
design  and  end  sheets  by  Arthur  M.  Hosking,  61  pages. 
Eeissued  in  1911  by  Mitchell  Kennerley,  New  York. 

MAN-SONG 

Twenty-seven  poems.  New  York:  Mitchell  Kennerley, 
1909.  Cloth.  Cover  design  reproduced  from  a  bas-relief 
in  clay,  by  Mona  Neihardt,  124  pages. 

THE  RIVER  AND  I 

An  account  of  the  author's  descent  of  the  Missouri  River 
from  the  head  of  navigation  in  an  open  boat.  New  York 
and  London:  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  1910.  Cloth,  50  illus- 
trations from  photographs,  325  pages. 

THE  DAWN  BUILDER 

A  prose  romance  of  the  Missouri  River  in  early  days. 
New  York:  Mitchell  Kennerley,  1911.  Cloth,  355  pages. 

47 


THE  STRANGER  AT  THE  GATE 

A  lyric  sequence  celebrating  the  mystery  of  birth.  New 
York:  Mitchell  Kennerley,  1912.  Cloth,  70  pages. 

LIFE'S  LURE 

A  story  of  the  gold  rush  to  the  Black  Hills,  South  Dakota, 
in  1876.  New  York:  Mitchell  Kennerley,  1914.  Cloth, 
277  pages. 

THE  SONG  OF  HUGH  GLASS 

Second  piece  in  the  American  Epic  Cycle.  New  York: 
The  Macmillan  Company,  1915.  Cloth,  126  pages.  School 
edition  with  annotations  by  Julius  T.  House  issued  in 
1919,  cloth,  181  pages. 

THE  QUEST 

Complete  collected  lyrics.  New  York:  The  Macmillan 
Company,  1916.  Cloth,  181  pages. 

THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

First  piece  of  the  American  Epic  Cycle.  New  York: 
The  Macmillan  Company,  1919.  Boards,  126  pages. 
Awarded  the  prize  of  $500  offered  by  the  Poetry  Society 
of  America  for  1919. 

THE  SPLENDID  WAYFARING 

The  story  of  the  exploits  and  adventures  of  Jedediah 
Smith  and  his  comrades,  the  Ashley-Henry  men,  discov- 
erers and  explorers  of  the  great  Central  Eoute  from  the 
Missouri  River  to  the  Pacific  Ocean.  Gives  the  historical 
background  of  the  Epic  Cycle.  New  York :  The  Macmillan 
Company,  1920.  Cloth.  Illustrations  from  contemporary 
prints,  manuscripts,  etc.,  290  pages. 

Two  MOTHERS 

Two  brief  dramas  in  verse.  New  York:  The  Macmillan 
Company,  1921.  Cloth,  82  pages. 


48 


THE  POET'S  PACK 

A  volume  of  one  hundred  poems  by  forty-six  different 
Bookfellows,  edited  by  Mr.  Neihardt  and  an  advisory 
committee  consisting  of  Lily  A.  Long,  Fanny  Hodges 
Newman  and  Clinton  Scollard.  Chicago:  The  Bookfellows, 
1921.  Boards.  Frontispiece,  150  pages. 


49 


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YB   15182 


505858^ 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


; 


